KM And Work

Andrew Gent has written an incredibly interesting post about the idea of sustainable KM. Why i say interesting is because this reaches at one of the basic issues around KM ... why should people actually participate? As you would agree, KM programs are not really going to be a success without the participation of people in the organization. And, if this is just additional work, why would they? Something i have written about before ... The idea being that the way we need to look at some of the web 2.0 tools within the organization, should be different from the way we find adoption for these outside the organization.

The question is ... if there are internal blogs, there are going to be some people who are going to write, and a host of people who are going to read, and few who will comment. But, would this reach anywhere the kind of participation the blogosphere finds? I dont think so, simply because of the questions that Andrew raises.

Which is why, i feel that some of the activities which KM programs expect people to do, in order to make the KM program successful, should actually not need to be done at all. These should be a product of the day-to-day working of people. For example, if someone is accessing documents on a particular topic on the corporate repository, maybe this should automatically be updated on their profile. Or, if someone is working on a particular project (according to the company systems), then this should be updated on their profile too. In other words, people should be doing their work ... technology can be harnessed to do the rest from there. Of course, this is not going to capture all the work that is being done out there, but this would be a good way to get people to see the value from programs like KM, and give an easier way for people to access what others are doing, without having to go through a lot of information.